New Mexico Shed Hunt

On this episode of The Western Rookie Podcast, Dan and Brian meet up for a New Mexico shed antler hunt with past guest Stephen Walker and Camera man Chris Parsons

Dan and Brian take the offer from past podcast guest Stephen Walker to come out shed hunting with him in some of his favorite spots in Arizona and New Mexico. This is also the first time both Dan and Brian have recorded a podcast while on the road! The guys chat about everyone’s goals and expectations for the hunt, and whether or not camera man Chris will turn into a shed hunter after the trip or hate sheds forever! Some interesting bets are made about how the hunt will go as Brian and Dan get excited for the trip!

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Western Rookie, a hunting podcast full of tips, tricks and strategies from season western hunters. There are plenty of opportunities out there. We just need to learn how to take on the challenges. Hunting is completely different up there. That person, 26, big game animals, you can fool their eyes, speak, can fold their nose, 300 yards back to the road, turned into three miles back the other way.

It's always cool seeing new hunters going, harvest and animal. I don't know what to expect. If there's anybody I want in the woods with me, it'll be you.

All right, guys. Welcome to the Western Rookie episode. I'm really excited about this because we are heading out to Colorado right now. We might actually not stop in Colorado tonight. We may go straight down to Arizona, and I'm with Brian Krebs and Chris Parsons. What's going on guys? Having a good time?

Yeah, great time so far. [00:01:00] We had a 12 hour drive starting out today, and we have five hours and 40 minutes left, so we're officially more than halfway there. Yeah, we survived. This is this is definitely a first for me as a podcaster. Have you ever done this before, Dan? I haven't. It feels like we're all flying in a plane together.

Yeah. Like a bush pilot or a helicopter hog hunt. Yeah. Someone's gonna come through with radio traffic Hey, you got a bird off your left side? I don't think bird strike, that's probably not how they talk at all. I don't know how they talk. We are going to put it down in the Hudson. If we put this truck down in the Hudson.

I think we've got bigger issues than just podcasting. But yeah, we're going out. So Steven Walker, he's been on the show before and unlike a lot of people, there's a lot of people that I talk to about setting up hunts and some of them we make happen. A lot of them we don't. This is one after Brian and I talked to him, we said we have got to go find some brown elk [00:02:00] sheds, hopefully some mule deer sheds and it's gonna be a lot of fun.

We've been anticipating this for a while cuz Brian has been sending us pictures of brown elk sheds and I'm like, dude, are you gonna leave any out there for us? No. Steven st. Sorry. Steven's been sending us pictures. He's been sending Brian and I pictures so it's gonna be one heck of a trip, man. What, let's start with this.

What are your guys' expectations? Cuz Brian, you've shed hunted before. Chris, you have zero experience shed hunting and I will just find them when we're actually elk hunting, but I've never gone out west specifically to find drop antlers. All right off the bat. I'm hoping for a more successful elk hunt or shed hunt than our first one.

Like biology wise on my own end. Yeah. We don't have a great track record of shed hunting together yet, so not at all priority number one, not throwing up would be a [00:03:00] good start. Yep. For me, and then I don't have expectations, but I have goals. I would love to find a brown mature elk shed and a brown mature meal, deer shed that would make my trip if I found like a cool deadhead in a spot where we can legally take it.

I think that'd be really cool to bring home too and put in the shop. We're building like a deer camp shop back home at the family farm, oh, nice. Yeah. What are you defining a mature elk shed as, are you talking like the size of the pedicle or are you saying five points or bigger or six points or bigger?

I would say like a big five by or a six by I'm not like 1 75 or bust, but yeah, like a mature elk that just not a rag horn. Because I've found a couple rag horn sheds now elk cunning. And so just a, I don't know, 200 inch bowler over, I guess that's not really mature, but not rag horn satellite bowl would be the proper satellite bowler.

Bigger. Yeah. Yeah. No, [00:04:00] that makes sense. What if we find out like a year from now that Steven doesn't actually have a church thing going on tonight and that he's out there placing sheds just so that we for sure find some, you know what? I would probably just choose to ignore that I found out and just be like, Steven, you still on for this year's?

Shed hunt. Yeah, exactly. Because he's oh crap, dude. You go place all your biggest sheds out there. I'm fine with going and picking 'em up. We wouldn't know the difference. Chris, what about you? What are your expectations or what do you think is gonna happen out there? Man, that is a very fair question.

Considering I am, by definition the Western rookie. I have no idea what to expect. In fact, I don't even know exactly where we are going. That makes three of us. All right. We just, we were halfway through Kansas and we got a, we got an address of where to show up to. Yeah, I got halfway to, I got three quarters of the way to KC last night.

I'm like, oh, by the way, Dan, you never sent me an address of where I'm supposed to meet you guys. Dude, I straight up hit send and I don't know what I was [00:05:00] doing at the time, why it didn't go through, but you said something along the lines of oh, the address didn't pull up. And so I was like, oh, that's weird.

I'll have Chris send you a pin drop of where we're dropping the truck off and where we can meet up. And then I went to the messages to you and realized that it just never went through. It wasn't like an issue with the mapping software. I just never fully sent it. Yeah. And I thought it was super funny this morning.

Because this whole time Chris has been like, I, do you guys know where we're going? Or like a town that I can look up and get a weather forecast and we're like, Nope. No idea. And so somewhere in the southwest us Yeah, somewhere between, the west coast and the Missouri. Yeah. South of the Mason Dixon.

And so Chris piles in the backseat and he is dude, I'm getting concerned because the size of your sleeping bag is really big dude. Your sleeping bag is the size of our whole 10 by 10 tent. Not quite, it's pretty big. It's not much smaller. Gerth wise it's as big.[00:06:00] I thought it, likewise, maybe it was for all three of us.

Yeah. Just a family zip together, sleeping bag. We'd stay warm. There goes your concerns about staying warm, right? Yeah. Then he gave me this deal of here's some pictures of what to expect when shed hunting and they were all in the snow. Sent him like negative five degree pictures in a foot of snow in Minnesota.

And he's oh my gosh. He's wait, is there gonna be snow? I did not pack for snow. And I'm like I don't think so, Chris. So Chris's goal is not to get frost bitten or hypothermia. Yeah. And now apparently throwing up is a concern. So I just learned that's one of his Brian's goals is to not throw up.

I didn't know that was on the docket either. So Chris is Dan, you are not paying me enough for this. I should have stayed home and hung out by the pool with my wife. This is, I guess we could talk about that too. So Chris is here to film and shoot. He's here to run the camera, which I've never had a like dedicated camera person on the hunt before.

[00:07:00] Yeah. Also, you're splitting his cost with me, right? I bought his lunch. Oh, there you go. All right. Yeah, I got the half half-priced lunch burritos left over from breakfast. Yeah, I totally listen. That was killer. We gotta cover that. Okay. I thought Brian was pulling a fast one on me. We were in the middle of nowhere and we were looking for a gas station, and it took us to this terrible gas station.

At first, we're like, there's not any food here. We're gonna go to the next gas station. That turned out to not be a gas station. So we backtracked and I'm filling up with gas, and Brian comes out with this big stupid grin on his face and I was like, oh, here we go. What's he gonna say? And he goes, dude, it's really nice in there.

There is a lot of food and it looks really good. And I'm like, oh, come on, man. There's little Debbies and old taquitos or something. He's no, I'm serious. Just wait. Just wait the whole time. I thought you were messing with me, but you weren't. It was probably. Yeah, it was probably multiple socioeconomic levels higher than [00:08:00] the surrounding landscape in town and county.

Like you just, you we've been driving for hours in the middle of nowhere and you all you start seeing is co-op gas stations where the truckers and farmers use and you're expecting like, I hope they sell food. Yeah. Like I hope there's an inside that sells food and drinks cuz we're hungry, we're thirsty, I gotta go to the bathroom.

And then we walk in and it was like, they must have just got done renovating it. They had a full, like a full, almost a deli to pick from. Yeah. At the chicken balls. Chicken balls. Which, I mean it's like the same as Rocky Mountain Oysters just from a chicken. That's not what they told me.

Oh. They tasted like chicken, I never really thought to ask that. We're in Colorado now. Technically they wouldn't be chicken balls though, right? They'd be cock balls. I don't know. Rooster Balls. Rocky, that's what they should have called me on oysters either, you know that right?

Yeah, no, I know that chicken hurts. I don't think buffalo wings don't come off of buffalo. Yeah. I don't think it matters what they got. All that is covered. So no, we had a great [00:09:00] lunch for where we are in the world right now, calzones burritos, chicken balls. Yeah. Potato wedges. I only let Chris pick off of the day old menu though.

Yeah, that's true. He got half priced cuz he hasn't proved his worth yet. Yeah. You just didn't know how good they actually were. If they were, I probably would've been eaten from the leftover Cheeto bag. Also, we look like the Beverly Hillbillies without loaded down your truck butt is and your backseat.

Yeah. We got, I was a little bit worried about space. We had to bust out the cargo net and a couple ratchet straps cuz we're tenting it, we're wall tenting it here. And so we got a lot of gear. Yeah. But it's gonna be worth it. I th we, we debated when we were transferring. Gear from truck to truck where we were gonna put elk sheds.

And I really genuinely hope that we have a problem of fitting all the elk sheds back here. Did you see that car? No, I didn't. That was a Domino's delivery car out here. No way. We're like 50 miles from, there's not there. The nearest towns, there's not a house in sight. [00:10:00] There's like an oil tower and some cows and nothing but desert.

I can't believe they deliver dominoes out here, dude. There's no way that guy's, this is his daily commute probably. And he's just sponsored by Domino's. They just let him take the Domino's car home because he's the only employee in the entire county. Maybe. Yeah. So if we look like the Beverly Hillbillies, now imagine, oh man, what we're gonna look like with a bunch of elk and mul deer antlers strapped to the back and maybe a big old deadhead.

I wish it wasn't like a visual impairment to just put every elk shed in order of size on the grill of your truck. But you know how fun that would be. It would suck because you'd have to clean a lot of bugs off. But yeah, it'd be pretty sweet. Yeah. We'll have to figure it out. Hopefully we have that problem.

That's what we reminded ourselves is that's a good problem to have to solve. Let's do a bet. All right. First, we've got a bet going already. Yep. The person who finds the biggest shed Yep. [00:11:00] Has to buy lunch on the way home, which usually isn't just like the leftover breakfast burrito line.

We'll stop someplace fancy. Like Subway. Like Subway. Yeah. They make, I'm gonna take you. Wait. Have you seen that we couldn't find any franchise anything in the last a hundred miles. Have you guys seen that? That's a good point. That is a good point. Maybe dinner. Yeah. We'll stop. Do dinner.

Dinner. Have you seen the TikTok or the Instagram or whatever where the husband's Hey, babe. You want to go someplace real fancy where they make the food right in front of you and she's oh my gosh, that sounds awesome. And he takes her to Subway. That's perfect. I thought he was gonna take her to the kitchen cuz she cooks for him every day.

Oh, there you go. No. What do you guys, let's do a bet on total sheds found. Are we get to include Steven and Steven's friends' sheds? No. Yeah. Every, okay. Everybody in our party by the end of the trip, we're gonna go total not day to day total in the days that we're shed hunting. How many sheds found?[00:12:00]

I don't want to guess. First I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull a Steve Renelle and get real egotistical and picky about like, how I'd answered this. You mean in whin and complain If you don't get it right, we'll, something wrong. We'll see. No, but no more like I have an answer, but I wanna hear everyone else's answer first.

Yeah. Oh yeah, I see it. All right. I am gonna go o I'm gonna go with what I really hope happens. And not like unrealistically hope, but this is gonna be outside most guesses probably. I'm hoping that we find 49 sheds between everybody and I think most people would say that's high. I feel like you're gonna need to elaborate on the detail of that number.

Like one less than 50. Yeah. Yeah. I just think we're gonna find 49 sheds. I think most people would say, like 18 to 20, maybe 30 would be good numbers. [00:13:00] But I hope that we get into multiple spots where there's been a bachelor group of bulls that have dropped antlers and we just clean house.

You gotta tell the listeners. So 49 sounds like a lot, but the guy we're going with, Steven Oh yeah. He's had. Years where he has found over 500 sheds in the season. So it's not like that, like you said, like it's not unrealistic. It's still a lot though. It's still a lot, but I think it would be, in most senses, even if we talked to him, he would probably say those numbers are high.

And that would be three really good days of shed hunting. Yeah. Three really good days of shed hunting. Chris, what's your number? It's tough because I've got a bit of a different goal and that is I wanna make sure that we can document this trip for all these listeners so everybody can see what's going on.

In fact, that conversation that you guys had, I think I caught that at the gas station. So shameless plug, whenever the video comes out, you guys can watch some of that and see [00:14:00] as well as the nothingness that we have going on that I keep videoing all of the brown grass. Aside from that, I think I would be happy if we could bring, like I wanted to say 18 or 19.

I was gonna say 20, but now we gotta be like super specific with our numbers. So I'm gonna go 18. 18. Oh, and in all fairness, we are not playing prices right? Rules on this? Yeah. Just total closeness, not closest about going over. All right, so he said 18, you said 49, right? So that's a split of 21. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go 27, 20.

Dude, these are all solid numbers because I'm gonna go, it's, I think it's gonna be hard to average double digits a day. I think it will. Yeah. But I hope you're, I hope you're right. I will gladly I'll gladly pay whatever bounty or whatever. What's the, what's on the line for this bet? We gotta figure that out.

Yeah, we do. Dude, I'm not going, I'm not doing anything crazy. Like I [00:15:00] almost said, like you get first pick of the biggest antler, but we're keeping whatever we find. Yeah. Where if you find it, you keep it decided we're not doing shedi rules No. For this, which is typically whoever finds it, whoever sees it first found it regardless of who's closer and who picks it up.

Or Hey, I've found one on your canyon. Can you go over there and grab it? And we're not doing match set rules where whoever finds the first half gets the second. If the second is found. And we decided to do that because this is like a destination hunt. Like one of us could find our only big brown elk shut of our life and then have to give it up right away.

Yeah. Because somebody else found the other half first and that would just suck. I think it might be a good idea though. Say we're glassing, I see an elk shed and we have to walk over to it. I think it would be fair to like, have me walk in front because I glassed it, so like I'll walk up and that way if the match [00:16:00] set is sitting there, I could pick it up and same with you.

You know what I mean? We've had that happen on whitetail sheds before. My wife found one and it was her first. Like good shed, she's found all by herself. So me and my buddies are all like coming over. Congrats. It's awesome. And then 10 yards farther on the same line, the other half was there and my buddy's oh yeah, the other half's right there.

And so we just give it to her, cuz she would've found it. It's right there. Like she would've taken another step and found that one as well. So I've never, it's oh here's one, there's the other. That one was just behind a bush. I've never been like, this half's mine cuz yeah, we're not going like you saying bold.

You see it and then it's like everyone races over there to see if the match set's sitting there somewhere. Oh, I picked mine up first. Yeah. Yeah. If you glass it, it's yours Also you've got Grizz with, I've got a shed dog, which, so you've got, dude, I really hope outta nowhere. He just comes busting through the brush with a big old brown in his mouth.

That'd be sweet. I'm really curious to know if he can. So [00:17:00] he was trained on elk sheds. I bought a match shed of I think I scored 'em at two 80. So they were like decent sized elk sheds. Not as big as I get by any means, but he would do pretty good when he was younger. Like he learned how to pick 'em up in the middle or closer to the base.

And, but that was a long, that was like four years ago. So I'm curious what'll happen if he comes across one, but they should have a ton of scent on him. Yep. It's super dry out here, so maybe that's a wild card I wasn't thinking about, but I would imagine like an elk shed's got more scent, more visibility.

He, I would've hoped that he does better on those than deer sheds. Did you bring a shed out at all to get him primed? No, I never do. No, I didn't know if that was a thing. I've never had a shed dog. I started training scout and he's actually got a really good nose and was finding 'em very quickly.

Like just the ones that I play. So obviously they've got my scent on them also. And I just didn't know if that's something you do, like you take him out, you get 'em all riled up, you toss a shed out there, have him find it, and that way he's just like ready to go. [00:18:00] No, I think people do that and I don't think it would be a bad idea.

I just, I literally went through the thought process of do I want to carry a shed all the way out there with his tightest gear we have and yeah. Packing, it's like, ah, probably poke holes and shit. Like I don't think I need to go that extreme. And he's never really had an issue with it.

We'll walk around and then when he sees one he is oh, hey, now we're shed home. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think having him is gonna be beneficial. Yep. I think having this many people glassing and walking, because I know like it's the four of us and Steven that is, and then it sounds like one or two days there's gonna be other guys out there with us.

And this is all country that Steven's familiar with, so we've got a lot of, a lot going in our favor, antelope. There's an antelope that's bug. Brian actually already found his first deadhead. Yeah. It was on private land off the highway. We did not stop to pick it up. And it was a whitetail. It was a mature whitetail.

It was, I can't get a huge look [00:19:00] at it. But it was outside it's mythical ears cuz there was no more ears. It was you thinking like 1 30, 1 40 or bigger? I, from the look I got to it, I don't think it was gonna be smaller than one 20 and I would honestly be very surprised if it was like bigger than one 50.

Okay. It was in that like you would want a better look size range. Yeah. So yeah, we we're gonna be in it. We'll see. I mean we either meet up with Steven tonight at his place or we shoot down and he comes down and meets wherever we're gonna be setting up camp and either way, tomorrow we're gonna be out shed hunting.

Yeah. I actually just dunno what the weather. I know that. At night, it's gonna drop down. You said below freezing. When we talked to him initially, he said probably in the forties. I am way more okay with cold weather than if it's how it feels outside right now. It's hot. No, hardly any clouds in the sky.

[00:20:00] I'd rather not be sweating like crazy. Hopefully it's a good, comfortable hiking and shed hunting temperature. Today this is gonna be the hottest, it's supposed to be like 83 degrees today. Yeah. And then like sixties the rest of the week. I just, I don't know, below freezing isn't it sounds scary, but it's not that cold.

Like No, I'm talking like it's probably gonna be 30 or 28. Yeah, right on the edge. And with four people in a tent. I think we'll be very comfortable. We've all got cold enough bags. None of them are as big as Brian's, but to be fair, like my girth is a little bit bigger too. Like I, that's true. I need more material.

I'm a Chris is tall, but I'm like a good six inches taller than you. Dude also good. Six, six inches. Inches taller. Oh my gosh. We had a conversation earlier. I don't believe there's any guys out there that are truly five 11. Dan says he's five 11, but I think if you're truly five 11, you say you're six foot.

Cuz why not? And if you're, because you're not six foot, and if you say you're five 11, that means you're like five, nine. That'd be like, know you can, [00:21:00] I'm 39, which I'm not 30. Okay. I'm for good example. I'm 34. Nobody's 34, everyone's 35. If you say you're 34, you're actually 33, but you're rounding up, that's different.

If you're truly 34, you'd say you're 35. Just because why not? That's different. That doesn't make senses because there's no inherent benefit for one year over the other. Oh, here's a better one. Nothing in my life would change if I said I was six foot versus five 11. Here's all, here's a better version.

You're at a bar and someone says, yeah, I'm 20 years old. You like, no one says that in a bar, you're either 21. Or you fake being 21. Yeah, because there's a benefit to it. There's no benefit. There's, you don't think there's a benefit to starting your height off with a six about lying and saying, I'm one inch taller.

Like nobody. Nobody that needs to know my height is gonna be more impressed by me being one inch taller or pretending that I'm one inch taller. Now, in like football, I understand there's a lot of people who Yeah, exactly. Say they're a little [00:22:00] bit taller. I like, I'm not getting drafted. Like I don't have to fake a 40 time.

If a quarterback was listed as five 11, I'd be like, I guarantee you he's five nine and they know they can't fly for sure. Six foot. So they listed 'em as five 11 for sure. But what benefit do I get from that? Why would I Just knowing you're that much better than your five 11 self. But I'm not much worse cuz now I'm a dishonest five 11.

Yeah, but that's 2% taller, 1% taller. But I'm not actually, boy, I'm just saying. I'm just like, what is the perceived benefit of some hey man, how's it going? I'm in a business meeting. Somehow height comes up. Oh yeah, man. Like I'm, yeah, I'm right at six foot. It's six foot. Oh, you know what?

Right around, I'm actually gonna give you my business because you are not under six feet tall. No, but six feet is generally where you need to be to have a 30 inch draw and get that extra energy into your arrow. And who doesn't wanna be known for shooting the most powerful, fastest bow? And they're like, if you tell yourself enough that you're six foot, maybe you will buy a 30 inch draw.

Hey, listen, I've seen a lot of guys with a long [00:23:00] draw and pulling back heavy poundage that cannot shoot very well. Why'd you look at me when you said that you've never seen me shoot my boat? Oh, I'm just having conversations. So I was trying to make eye contact every now and then. Chris, what benefits have you seen?

Do you think you would have a lower caliber of life if you were under six feet? This is a great question and I've been trying to figure out how to get into this conversation and I just don't see a window to where I can participate. Is that a nice way of saying, I don't really care? I feel like there are other measurements that are of more benefit over the long run.

Yeah, like your hands. If you're six feet tall, statistically you got bigger hands. There you go. I don't know. I've never actually looked that up, but I'm sure it's probably pretty accurate. I'm pretty sure you and Shaq don't have the same size hands. No, that's definitely true. But he said if you were over six foot you might be closer.

Yeah. Is it the same rule [00:24:00] then at six 11? Is there nobody six 11? If you're six 11, you just say seven feet tall. I think that's true. Yeah. I think ifs a basketball player came up to me and said they're six 11. I'm like, so you a strong like 6 9, 6 8. Because who wouldn't be listed as seven foot?

There are people in the NBA right now who are listed as six 11. Yeah, because they're six eight. So they know they can't get away with seven people would call 'em out on it. But then again, why as a whole, what's the point? Because if everybody was just honest, you would actually know how tall people were.

So it's like you've got four guys all different heights saying that they're six 11 and none of them are actually six 11. So it's like I, I just don't understand. I don't get it. I don't see why that would be even an issue right off the bat. Like vertical. When you have a vertical, when you have a 39 and a half inch vertical, you actually have a 39 and a half inch vertical.

You do not have a 40 inch vertical and you don't claim to have a 40 inch vertical. That's his, and that makes more sense to lie about [00:25:00] because it's a feat of athleticism and not just something biological maybe. But I just don't think this is the kind of argument you can win with logic. It's definitely I figured that out a while ago, but I'm trying to convert you to actually use your brain.

I've never needed to, cuz I'm six two, oh, man. All right, so back to shed hunting. Brian is gonna find a six point side, which is actually gonna be a five point side, and he's gonna be really excited about it. Have you, are you saying you've never rounded up a deer? If you shoot 149 inch buck, you're never like, yeah, I shot like a one 50 class buck.

I guess. I don't know the exact, I've only measured up until three, maybe four months ago. I had never measured a deer, ever. Oh. I had to look up a YouTube video of exactly how to measure a deer, and then I measured my deer and I did it to the most precise measurement that I possibly could. And if it was teetering, unlike.

A half of an eighth or a [00:26:00] 16th, yeah. I just rounded down and then the next one I would go up to even it out because I had two halves, so it, I technically one more eighth. I think you're supposed, if you're in between an eighth, you always round up an eighth. I think that's actually, no, I didn't know that.

Rocket rules, so I might be, yeah. Over the entire measurement of, but the whole system is based on rounding up. I'm not rounding up like an inch. I'm not even rounding up a half inch. I wasn't even, okay, rounding up an eighth of an inch unless I rounded down an eighth of an inch somewhere else.

I think you're just so honest that you're missing out on a little life. I just don't see a point in not, I don't know, but I do think that we're gonna find a lot of shit. I hope I find the five point and the six point version and then we can see how close they are. I don't think five point exists though.

It's really, it's either like a four. Played Chris. I would sayed, I would say in hunting stories, satellite bulls don't exist because if you shoot, if you like, I shot a satellite bull, you really shot a rag horn. [00:27:00] But you want a sound, you want the story to sound better. And if you shoot a true satellite, you're like, oh, this is a herd bull.

For sure. Yeah. But aren't the satellite bulls actually like on the outskirts of the herd and the rag horns are typically mixed in with the herd? So there is a distinction aside from just being antler size. Yeah. Technically satellites like a rag horn. A rag horn could totally be a satellite bull also.

Technically it could be a herd bull too. It could be, yeah. But when people talk about sizes, like everyone wants to say they shot a bull. Yeah. You understand? Yeah. So in hunting stories, I don't think satellites really exist. Yeah, okay. I could understand that. I think yeah, I think.

Finding the antlers from what is a perceived satellite bull or a hurt bull would be amazing. I would imagine. We're gonna find several rag horns. What do you think, like four to one, five to one rag horns versus satellite or herd? I think, so we're going, we're gonna spend most of our time in either New Mexico or Arizona in some [00:28:00] highly managed units.

So I think the average bull is prob probably a satellite, not at a, not a rag horn, cuz they like, think of a bull's life. He's a spike for one year. He's a rag horn for one, maybe two years, depending on a couple factors. But then a majority of his life, he's either a satellite or a herd bull.

Yeah. So if you look at antlers on that. No, that's true. I think most of them are gonna be satellite sized. Dude. Okay, so rookie back here. Yeah. What are we talking about? Elk, right? So rag horn satellite. Herd. So there's spikes. That's explanatory. The rag horn is next year up.

So that's where you get typically like a three by four. Four by four. They're, the beam's probably 20 inches, 30 inches five inch tines. I got a couple rag horn pictures I could show you of elk antlers. I've found it archery hunting. Then they do that for a year, maybe two.

And then they get to that intermediate bull size for like when they're three years old to maybe five, six. It really depends on the unit and what the herd structure's, like the [00:29:00] age class. But they'll be like a five point, like a solid five, maybe a little six. They won't be satellites, like a behavior. They won't really be big enough to hold down their own herd of cows in the rut.

Like they'll get beat up by a real mature bull. I don't even know if they get beat up. They just know they can't explain it. They, yeah, they probably know, but it's like there, there's no way that they could hold down the territory or hold down their harem. Because a bigger, more mature bull is gonna push 'em off.

Sure. That makes sense. But they're like that teenage, maybe college-aged kid who's I'm the dude lots of, and then like a 30 year old guy who's very successful shows up and it's okay, I'm not as awesome as I thought I was. Yeah. But I feel like even that 30 year old is the satellite when you ask like a 50 year old, like multi-millionaire businessman.

Oh yeah. The older you get the more you look down upon younger people, it can really depend. So like a herd bowl on an OTC or a general unit might be a like very small satellite in a trophy unit. Does that make sense Chris? Like the age structure's just different and it takes a bigger, more dominant [00:30:00] elk to hold down a herd, but herd and satellites more behavior.

Do you, does that bull have his own harem of cows or not? Satellite bulls. Satellite bulls typically roam around by themselves and they try to steal a cow if they can in the middle of the, like the moment when everything's going nuts. But they don't hold her down and keep her for the whole rot yeah, that makes sense.

They'll just try to, they're like the milk man. They just try to sneak in when the guy's out to work. Yeah. That's fair. You gotta have those, you're not gonna be full-time like I'm taking her now. You can't fault him for that though, right? You gotta work with what you got.

It's like being less than six foot. Yeah. It's actually part of Hardy Weinberg's acry bone equilibrium on evolution and Darwinism and like strength and power and size is only like one attribute that helps for like natural selection, but like cunning and stealth and like intelligence.

Like obviously these animals have it to a degree. If you can find a way to sneak in and breed a cow without getting beat up, like obviously you got some brains [00:31:00] like you got something else that might be advantageous to the gene pool. Yeah. Yeah. You might not teeth passed on, you might not be six foot, but at least you're honest and your brain.

You still might get beat up from time to time. Oh, shoot. You're always risking it Hey, do you have a confession? Do I have a confession? Yeah. Why? No, I'm actually six two. No, I know, but do you have a confession now about the size of your bull that you shot? Which bull? I shot two. A big bull. Oh, he was a herd bull.

Cause he had cows. No, I know, but how many inches did he actually score? 3 54. Are you sure it wasn't three 50? No. Because yes, I am sure. No, because when I first scored him, I took, so his whale tails bend out so far at the end, I assumed his widest inside spread would be like in between his like thirds.

Yeah. And then a year later I was like, oh wait, he's way wider back here. And I, it was 31 versus 34, so he went from 3 51 to 3 54. Oh, all yeah. The other one was two seventy nine and I call him two 80 all [00:32:00] day long. Yep. Okay. I figured a couple those of broken T. So I figured one of those. I have no idea.

I've not scored my bulls at all. I need to see what they score. You know what I'm excited about? As many elk sheds as Steven finds. I'm sure there's some hammers at his house. Oh dude. He's got like the biggest and most unique ones. He said gonna call us in a little bit. I feel like it's almost worth driving all the way to his house just to see his shed collection that.

I don't know if I want my hopes to get up that high. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Do you do it? Do you go and see it beforehand and go, man, I really hope we get into one of these. Or do you go afterwards and be like, Hey, we did all right and then see his and go, oh crap, dude. No, I don't think that's a good idea.

I don't think that's a good idea. I feel like beforehand, yeah, get energized to like actually maybe like you might manifest it. You think so? That's one of those things, you put it out in the universe and. Back. No, I meant more like you're so [00:33:00] excited and you're energized. You like walk farther. Yeah. I've not found many elk shits.

In fact, I found one last year. Okay. I glassed it up and said, you know what? I'm just going right after it. Because of some events that happened in the past that listeners already know about. I found a really nice six point side last year, but it was so chalky and white and brittle. You grab onto it and you have white powder left on your hands.

I just a really nice elk. I just had a podcast with Sean Curtis from Wyoming. I don't know if it'll release before or after this, but he does Antler resurrection and he found a way to turn those chalkers back into like browns by restoring 'em. He applies some stuff. Paints 'em up.

That's, and so it would like basically keep it from getting worse. Yeah. And then also make it look fresh. It's still not gonna, if it's that chalky, you're not gonna get all the weight back, but it'll still look cool. Is there something you're supposed to do to them, like after you find them?

Because I've never preserved [00:34:00] anything as far as the antlers go. Will they eventually turn white? No. Even if they're kept inside? No. Will they get chalky eventually? No, not that I've seen. I've seen, look at like your grandpa's buck up on the wall. Like those antlers aren't chalky.

They're, the fur is just, no, but I never see I never see dark brown antlers on anything hanging on the wall anymore. If it's an old one it typically seems like they're starting to get that beige or yellowy color. And maybe that's what they look like when they were shot. Or maybe they do, obviously it would be a lot slower than being out in the sun getting baked.

But I wonder if there's some type of aging that still happens with them. I think people that smoke. And their houses had their stuff turned yellow. Oh, yeah. I could see that. But like my dad's got some bucks on the wall that are at least 25 years old, and I have, they're, they still look like hard white, like whitetails with white tines and brown bases.

Yeah. But no, once you take 'em out of the sun, the uv they pretty much stop aging. That's good. I've never had one like start to degrade. [00:35:00] My brother had a house fire one time and he said they put it out and he walked in and his buck, he had 150 inch buck that just disintegrated over the course of an hour.

Everything like it dry? Yeah, the heat and the dry the air, like it just fell apart. Geez. Yeah. The antlers just and I can imagine like that mount is just foam underneath. Even when that burns it's gotta be hot. But I'm saying like, that's even a source of fire connected to the antlers. True.

Yeah. So it's like the fire would probably get pretty intense right there. Yeah. The whole house is gonna be intense, but yeah. No, I don't, once you pull 'em out of the sun they're fine. All right. That's good to know people. Do you do anything with a pedicle? No, the pedicle just stays exactly same.

All the sheds I've found over the years, nothing's changed them. If you have one that's got a little blood or pink on it, a lot of times that'll dry up and it'll just be like straight white. But I've had a couple that are like really bloody, like they must have fell off hours before I picked them up.

And sometimes that dries on red in a way. But that's the only change I really see. Some people like do [00:36:00] put like a little tiny like oil just to keep 'em hydrated and coated and protected and it just makes 'em shine a little bit. Gives 'em a little bit of, whatever, glisten. But I don't do that.

Have you ever done anything like creative with your elk sh or any of your sheds that you find? Have you ever, or I guess, what's your outlook or opinion on engraving in jewelry? Knife handles, things like that, you into that kind of thing? No, I don't do any of that. I bought a little moose paddle once and I was gonna make a cribbage board and sell it, and I gave up on that real fast.

That would actually be really cool. I love cribbage. I love cribbage too, but I did not love that project, I'll tell you that. No, I'm not and I'm not an artist. I just, that's what I've learned over and over again is I'm not an artist. I can build stuff. I can craft, like I can be a, like a contractor and build a deck, but I can't do like artistic things.

Do you think, could you lay, could you put like an a chunk of elk antler on a lathe and [00:37:00] almost make like the pegs for a cribbage board? People do it, but I don't think they use a lathe. Could you imagine that though? Imagine having, cause like you'd have to find it center of gravity or it's like you'd have to, I don't think you'd be able to anchor it and spin it.

You'd have to sand it. You wouldn't be able to, yeah, I think people use like Dremel tools. Yeah, I could see that. I think it would be really awesome. And this is a great idea. For somebody out there, if it hasn't been done, even if it has been done, you just do it also, but do it better. I think it'd be really cool to find like a big six point side that when you lay it down, there's four points of contact, right?

The pedicle, the five and the six and maybe the brow tie. It has four points of contact and then all the way down the main beam is the cribbage board. People have done that and then you just, you don't even need four. You just need three. Yeah, I mean you could do it with any amount, but I think it'd be awesome to just have a giant one that covers up a coffee table and then your elk kler is the cribbage board.

I'd imagine that would go for [00:38:00] quite a bit of money. People have done that, and then if you go to Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, banquets, sometimes the chapter has a big shed and they've taken a, like a skill saw and they cut. Like grooves in it. And those are their, Rocky Mountain has big, like medallion raffles always.

Or you buy a medallion and it's that year's thing. Yeah. Little token. That's your ticket. And they have those like on the shed up that's made beam. Just like you're talking. Have you ever sold a shed? No, I've given a couple, I gave a couple to Grizz this's trainer breeder to build up his like shed dog training program.

Okay. Cuz he, he was new to it and I gave a couple to another guy that asked, and I was like, ah, sure. But nowadays when people ask, I say no, I don't give him away. I don't sell 'em. What price point would you, I don't know, if you found, say you found like just a gorgeous 400 inch plus set at what's the dollar amount that you would let those go for?

Like a 400 inch set of elk sheds is big enough where you're starting to sell it [00:39:00] based on the inch because it's a 400 inch. Yeah. But the going rate for browns I just heard was $20 a pound, and that kind of fluctuates from buyer to buyer. But that sounds, that's pretty high compared to what I typically hear.

Normally it's in the teens, isn't it? It's gone up the last couple years. Okay. So it's strong right now. And I'm sure we'll get an antler buyer to DM us and say, don't tell people that it's not that high. Now everyone expects it. Yeah, but so put it into perspective though. A 400 inch bowls probably got around a 15 pound antler on each side.

My 3 54 was 11. Okay. So you had that many more inches in mass and whatever. Yeah. So for 30 pounds, you're gonna sell a once in a lifetime set of sheds for 600 bucks. No, I'm not gonna do that. So it's gotta be significantly more than that. And then it's at what point does it not matter?

Does the money not matter? It's just that cool to have these sheds. But there's people who sell sets for thousands of dollars if they're the right set. I heard a story from my cousins in Idaho that ran into a sheep herder that also guided in the fall, and he was tracking this huge meal deer.

And for [00:40:00] two seasons he watched that meal, deer drop both sides, and he picked up both sides. The second year was like 47 days. He was up in the mountains watching this. Deer in the wintertime picks up both sides. I can't remember the details, but it was like this first year he was like two 10, and then the second year he was like 2 37 and he sold both sets for six grand and he regretted it.

Yeah, I can see that. Regretted it because he wish he would've kept it or regretted it cuz it was not enough money. He thinks he could have got more, but it wasn't so much that he just wanted to have it that bad. Yeah, I don't know. That's a tough call. I'm just, I feel like it would take a long time before I felt like I wanted to sell some, because the money mattered more than the antler to me.

Yeah. I don't think people would give me what I would want. Okay, 50 grand, no one's gonna pay me 50 grand for a 400 inch set. Like I'm not, yeah, I wouldn't sell. I feel like I would feel the same way. Not a hundred percent the same way, but similar with finding sheds as I do when I shoot an animal.

If somebody came up to me and said, Hey, that bull you shot last year, I'm gonna give [00:41:00] you a bunch of money for it. I'd be like, dude, it's not for sale. What you there is that number that I would, but what you would probably find is like the guy that's willing to pay that much probably has history with that bull.

Or he shot that bull the next year, now he wants the set to go with it. It's stuff like that. But yeah, like I said, I don't buy sheds either, cuz I don't think that's very cool. I'm not a collector, so No, I feel like it's similar to someone shooting a banded bird. Versus buying bands from birds. Oh. You know what I mean?

I can see that. Dude, I don't I didn't shoot it, so I don't want the band. Also, I'm not gonna sell you this band because I shot it on the hunt. It's not for sale. Yeah. I've seen lanyards where they have those, like already on 'em, just a bunch of aluminum circles, yeah. Yeah. My dog can, my dog collar has one.

It's a pheasant dog collar, so I don't know what it says. Is it an actual band, heavy collar band? No, it's a heavy it, oh, it was just the band that came with the do you collar quick band story. Yeah. My [00:42:00] first band at Goose Ever and only solo. I've shot a couple with groups before, but my first and only solo band, I shot it with my bow.

No way. Yeah. Yeah. It was it on the ground? Yeah, for sure. Was it in season? Don't answer that. Yeah, it wasn't season. It was, I had a goose egg cuz we were doing like the youth. Waterfall stuff and my dad lives on the lake or my parents live on the lake and every winter or fall the geese would migrate and yard up on our lake and they'd just hang out on our beach.

And this goose was wounded and it had a band. I could see like how the back patio, it's got a band. So I called my brother and he's dude, you have to find a way to shoot that goose cuz like in this part of the country, bands are super rare. Like your cousin Shane's been hunting his whole life and like he hardly ever shoots any bands.

Yeah. And so I'm like, I can't use my shotgun cuz I got neighbors, my parents are gone, I don't know what to do. And my brother's shoot it with your boat. So I called my buddy and I'm like, Hey, can you come down here the hill and film me with this? And he had one of those old Motorola razors with the, [00:43:00] what is it?

Eight bit the really good camera. Yeah, the really good one. He films me, I walk up to five feet from this goose with a field point and I shoot it and I'm trying to peg its wings down while I shot two. I thought if I went right through the side of the wing, it would keep 'em from flying.

He just went up and above it and started flying away with my arrow halfway in and out of him. Not a good PR stunt for the hunting industry. No, definitely not. Flies right down the beach in front of all these docks and dives into this little crick down by the end of our road where we used to spear carp.

It's now I'm like, oh, I gotta go find my arrow. Like I want to go get this goose. So we go find them, jump on them, dispatch 'em the way all water followers do. Head pops off that doesn't ever happen to me before you, you go once, twice, you usually get it. The whole head popped off.

The whole thing came. So now I'm walking down my street with this headless goose dripping blood the whole way back to my house. But I got my band. That's this beautiful picture, dude. I love it. The out the front window. No, that too. Yeah, but the story [00:44:00] I just picturing you walking up with a headless goose dripping blood all over here with the biggest smile on his face cuz he just shot Lauren with a bow.

It's just so satisfying. And I ate that goose. Good. Yeah, I would hope so. Yeah. What was it injured from? Broken wing. Probably a hunter. Somebody shot it. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Wing getting missed. All his felt probably bad cuz all of his friends left him already. They broke. Oh yeah, they're off. No, they're that dude.

The outdoors is like the freaking wild west man. It's like climbing Everest, right? You go up there with all your buddies and then somebody like sprains their ankle and it's you're dead. We can't all hang out here. Or we're all dead too. Those stories from Everest where people just get left up there to freeze to death on the mountain is pretty insane, but really is.

I heard though the goose were different than that. I heard they had like if one gets sick and goes down, another one will go with it until it gets better and then they'll both leave together. I've heard that. Do you think that's true? Because I've shot a lot of geese and none of the other ones came back to check on him.

Lessers will. That's fair. Lessers will do that. Oh yeah. Yeah. You can [00:45:00] shoot Gaal Will. Gaal are really stupid. Yeah, you can shoot, you could shoot eight of them and he is man, you guys are all sick. I better stick around and help you out. And then he comes back and you shoot the last one. Dude, we are in some elk country actually right now.

I've seen elk out in these foothills, even though it seems so barren and desolate. Those are horses so no, not those. But I think it'd be pretty cool. I would imagine most of the elk are not just this close to the road hanging out, but it's definitely possible. We were talking earlier about the videos that we saw this winter of bulls trying to jump fences and getting, they clipped the top wire and Yeah, just tumble.

And then one guy, it was a big bull, like out definite shooter, clipped his toe, flips over, hits his head, shed pops off. Oh man. Then they help him get outta the fence and the guy just picks up this monster elk shed. He's I guess it's my payment for helping this bull out. Yeah. Unless it's in Colorado.[00:46:00]

Cuz odds are that happened before season. Yeah. Unless private land shed, it's legal on private land. Yeah. Or a shed closure in Utah and. Yep. Look at this. Talking about waterfowl. I see some birds on the water right here. Those are probably coots. And now you can't see 'em. No, I saw some white wings in there flapping over on this edge.

Okay. But yeah, man, I hope, I really do hope we get into some stuff and finding a big old elk antler. Actually that's the question I was gonna ask next. Chris, you having no experience with shed hunting, picking up antlers? What do we do? If Chris finds a big shed, he finds a big shed, finds out, dude, you can get like 150 bucks for this shed.

And he's okay, yeah. Do we just let him sell it is his first shed. He has no idea. Or even better yet, he finds a giant side [00:47:00] that he might get 300 bucks for. You, me, it's dude, you 20 bucks for it and tell me it's a good deal. Chris. Chris, you gotta understand this is a really good shed. He's yeah, but it doesn't mean anything to me.

How do I could make 300 bucks? How do we know it doesn't mean anything? Are you a hunter, Chris? I am. No, Doy. Yeah, I feel like you're treating me like I'm like there's stepchild back here or something there. You did ask a couple questions or you made a couple comments.

And to be fair, you didn't know what the agreement was coming out here with Steven, but you're like, I'm sure he'll let us keep a couple big ones. And it's okay, that's fair. We're, yeah. I did ask, I thought we were working with Steven to we're just trying to help him make mind and Hey, we get to come out here.

He's gonna show us where all these cool things are. We're gonna look for them. That's gonna be the deal. I didn't know it was like a, keep what you find a thing. Yeah. This is a lot of money going into this and gas just to come and help someone else make money. I think he's right though. I think we are bringing Chris out there to help us find some, so if he finds one.

It's, maybe we'll let him keep like a Chaker or something. Technically, he's my employee. So it's like Chris and Grizz. Grizz and Chris work [00:48:00] together. No. Back here and No because Grizz is he actually knows what he is doing. The waterfall crew that I hunt with had a list.

Like you're on the AAM or the B team, right? Yeah. Grizz is on the aam. Oh yeah. Cuz nobody else wants to go out there after a bird. Yeah, exactly. And some of the hunter, like you and I are a teamers, right? Yeah. So I guess what I was saying was, I was like, Grizz isn't gonna keep 'em though, right? No, but I will.

So that's why I was meaning that oh yeah, sure. Grizz is gonna keep 'em just, yep. So if it's something that you want, I definitely want you to keep it. I, if you're like, dude, I can make 300 bucks off this shed. I was just joking with this shit. I would probably tell you no, since he was asking if we had to give him to Steven, I was like, yeah, no, you have to give him to us.

That's part of the that's how shed hunting works. Yeah. But yeah, no I feel like he's not a shed hunter yet. But I gotta imagine walking up on the elk shed for your first shed's. A great way to become one dude. It'd be sweet. It would be very sweet what it we're. We're gonna get out there and there's three of us who have spotted sheds [00:49:00] through glass before.

We've walked up on sheds before. And then Chris is gonna be out there like filming and he is gonna put the camera away, pull up the binos and be like, oh, I think I see one. And it's just gonna be a tank, man. I would laugh if Chris is like trying to get like a side angle of us walking and he's like looking down at the camera and just way bam.

Chip, chip strip over one. Gosh darn it. These stupid bones keep tripping me up and just like throws off. The camera goes down. I'm like, all right Chris, now you have to stay out here and find enough sheds to pay me back. No, he is over there tripping on sheds, trying to film us not knowing like, God dang it, these stupid wood bones.

Yeah. What are all these rip bones? He might not have shed hunted, but he's definitely a competent enough outdoorsman to know what a shed is. I feel like he'll be a shed hunter by the end of this trip. I got it. I up that challenge. We'll see. I'm curious how he'll like it. Can you imagine?

It's very addicting to me. If he, like we find some sheds, he's you guys drove all the way down here [00:50:00] for that. That's a possibility too. This is what we do. So my thing is I love just being outside. Yeah. So if I don't see or find anything, I mean I'll be a little bummed cuz it's part of it, but it would still be worth it.

You do go waterfowl hunting in South Missouri. West Missouri. So it's not about as much about shooting things or bringing things home. Yeah. You limit it out on friendship. Yeah. That's we that, that is our go-to. That sounds like a real fruity way to describe your hunting. That's what we say.

Almost every waterfowl trip in southwest Missouri. At least we limited on friendship. We're not really out here to fill tanks. We're just here to limit out on friendship. We're just hanging out, having a good time. Why did we all go to that accent? I don't know. I didn't, I don't know where y'all are taking us.

I just feel like Chris is no, I'm a man. I still like to be no outside. I just, but I would still like my friends and now all of a sudden we're talking with a lisp. Hey man, some people have lisps. It's not that bad. Hopefully Chris doesn't say, why. Did you guys drive all the way out here for this?

No, I hope he's this is cool. I can't [00:51:00] believe. We're just walking around picking these things up. So is this kind of the area that he also hunts in Steven or, I don't know the exact area that he hunts in. I know he hunts in Colorado and it's a spot where they've had quite a bit of success.

I don't think it's here. I think he hunts tucked way farther back into the mountains. I'm sure instead of necessarily on the front range. And I'm sure he also Yeah, true. Because the winter range out here is usually not the hunting range. But I'm sure if he had tags for these, like Arizona, New Mexico where we're going, I think are draw units.

So if he draws a tag, he probably would hunt here. But yeah, it could be hard. So Chris, how do you feel about rattlesnakes and aggressive pigs with daggers for teeth? They were probably not my favorite things, but it is what it is. What do you, if a Halina charges us, we can just shoot it right?

I think that's definitely a shoot shirt. Shoot first and ask questions later. Situation. Yeah, that's probably true. But I'm not curious. Gonna spend time googleing it while he's charging me. Some [00:52:00] conservation agent's probably just gonna laugh at us. Like really? Dude? Oh, self-defense against a halina.

Okay. So I had, I told the story earlier, but for the listeners, Wesson MacArthur from Rise and shed said he was really, mother Nature was calling and he had his, his britches down by his ankles full squat and he looks up and there's a halina charging him. What do you do in that situation?

Can't run. No, can't move. Yeah. Could you imagine that? What did he do? I think he finished his job a lot faster than he was expecting. And it all worked out in the end, but yeah, it runs right by him with a razor blade tusk sticking off the side of his head. I wonder what this cop's gonna think about us all having headphones and Mike's on.

We can certainly ask him to be on the podcast. That'd be fun. I hope I didn't get pulled over, but it would be fun to be like, Hey man, you mind saying something to the lawsuit? To be honest, he has multiple reasons to pull us over right now. Why is that? Minnesota truck, their helicopter headsets on, but it looks like they just stole someone's [00:53:00] U-Haul.

Yeah. I don't know if any of that's probable cause though. No, probably not. But I don't know if they have whatever those right to search laws are out here oh, I have no idea. I have no idea. He's a sheriff. We'll just smile and nod. Not even looking. Anna was a girl.

Now we're going through this tiny little town. What are we gonna do? Oh, we're not even close to dinner. We just ate. I'm hungry again. Dude. You should have joined Chris on the discount burrito bowl or the burrito. Dude, that thing's added so much steak and potatoes in it. It was unreal. It was it actually good?

Yeah. What are you guys, rate your meals. Are we going off of a rating of gas station food or like you have? Yeah. You have to go off gas station food. I'm going with a 10, then 10 for gas station. Gas station food. It was straight steak and cubed potatoes are, have you ever been to a quick trip?

Not, probably not a kt. He's probably been to a bunch of qts. Oh [00:54:00] yeah. Which is totally different. It's hard when there's quick trip in the game. It's hard to rate anything. A 10. I would say it was like a six. And what did you get again? I got a small personal pizza and then I decided to try the chicken balls.

Oh yeah, that's right. And I do think it was ground up chicken, but I really can't be sure at this point. I got a calzone. Yeah, your calzone looked good and they didn't do a whole lot to doctor it up, so I'll say that. But for the ingredients that they use in a gas station calzone, I'd probably give it a solid eight.

I gave it a six bucks, a little bit of seasoning. Could have bumped it up quite a bit. I was hoping for a one, like I was hoping we could find just anything. Yeah. And so six is that would be like expecting a 10 and getting a 15 instead. Yeah, normally you go to a gas station and a place like that and all you get is like a jalapeno cheddar brat that you might as well buy and then walk over and drop directly into the [00:55:00] toilet because of how quickly it passes through you.

But I was very surprised that you weren't pulling my leg. No, it was a beautiful establishment. We would give him a shout out and a call, but trust us folks, you'll never be there. You'll never find it. Never. You'll never find it. We could give you the exact GP p s coordinates and you'd get within three hours of there and be like, there's no way.

This is where I'm actually going. Yeah. I'm not, this must be, there's no reason to trans, like there's no reason to travel this area of the. The United States? No, it's been an interesting drive. We've gone through a lot of landscapes so far. Yeah. Now we're starting to get into the foothills of the front range.

We've got some cedars and pinions. Did you notice for a while there the sage brush was looking a little bit suspicious? Little suss? Yeah. I was like, I don't think I'm gonna go pet that sage brush. No, definitely not. I don't know what kind of cactuses those were, but they look like sage brush from a distance and you get up close, you're like, oh, not a sage brush.

Not what I want to mess with at all. I think there'll be a couple. I think we'll get [00:56:00] poked and cut a little bit out here this week some scrapes, but I just really hope we don't get bit by anything. I hope we shed hunt stuff like that, cuz I have never Oh, and I love how the listeners are like, oh, thanks for telling us.

Yeah, thanks for telling us what you're seeing. It's like pinon and cedar front range with if Chris was doing his job, they could just see it on YouTube. But yeah, he's. He's down on his phone. No, I think we're gonna, I think we're gonna be shed hunting a lot of that kind of country, because I've never, maybe more, I think it's gonna be more open like this than on the left side maybe.

Hope I don't know. All I got to go on is YouTube videos and pictures, but that sound, that always looks like fun country to me to hunt. Yeah, dude, it's a lot of fun to glass in, for sure. So Brian, do you think it's gonna be harder for you to adjust your eyes to the browns when you're used to whitetail?

No, I don't think so. Because well, like whitetail aren't necessarily like white and it brown is like people are now saying oh, I found some brown whitetail sheds. Brown is it's not brown, brown. Like you, it's not a shooter. It's a, [00:57:00] it's brown just means it's this springs sh aler. That's all it means.

Down here especially we could, but they're a darker color, right? They're not like white not, yeah. You've seen my elk sheds on the wall. Yeah, those are brown, like true brown. The color of them aside for when they get out. Yeah. Like to the last few inches of the tip.

They're brown. These are gonna look more like the tips that color. Yeah. And I've seen, obviously videos of guys, going out and elk shed hunting and stuff. But then I was looking at the pictures that, that Brian had on his phone earlier. They're a lot whiter colored. Yep. Yeah, the whitetails are like white colored, but depending on where we are in like New Mexico, Arizona, the elk sheds could be like very white if it's not a lot of trees, like the antlers are white by nature.

They turn brown from the things they rub on and stuff and it collects like trees. Especially in the whitetails. That's why the bases are dark is cuz that's where they're rubbing on the trees and it's collecting in the burs. But out here between like different trees and then so much sun. They can get bleached white just by the end [00:58:00] of the winter and then drop as white.

But you'd still call that a brown because it's a fresh shed. Yeah, brown actually means like the same that green does when you're in a job like, ah, he's green. No, he is just new. Yeah. It's not actually green, it's just a matter of speech and not a descript description of the color. Yeah. So no, I think it's more because you're, you, it's similar shapes and like locations and like it's a skill of look, like everyone wants to just look over and see a full beautiful six point shed in the open.

You can see the whole shed at once and be like, that's a shed. But it's really like getting good at it. It's really more looking and seeing like a one inch patch of a material and you're like, I think that's an antler because it looks like the right color or the right shape or the right texture or whatever.

But being able to see an antler by only seeing a couple inches of beam and be like, oh, there's an antler. That's where the real skill comes in, where you start finding more. Is there a [00:59:00] certain place that, that it's like they usually get hung up on or do they, did they just fall off? I would say a large majority of the time they just purely fall off, and that's because the, like the chemistry and the hormone changes that cause these to fall off.

An antler can go from 100% attached. You could hang 'em by his antlers to on the ground in 24 hours. So it's such a people always do shed traps and like maybe they work, maybe they don't, but it's probably more so because you're pulling them in with food and they're just spending more time there.

That's where they, and I've heard dropping and I've heard horror stories of shed traps. Yeah, they get caught in them because that antlers not coming off until it's ready. Yep. So that elk can run through these bushes every day and then it's not like a loose tooth. Yeah. It happens so fast. Oh, okay.

Yeah, that's a great analogy. Like I, I had a deer and I thought like, when one falls off, the other one's gonna fall off right away, which sometimes it happens. I saw a whitetail this, not this last season, this season before that spring. I was [01:00:00] watching it on trail camera. It was coming through every single day.

And one day it showed up on camera with only one side. And I was like, oh dude, it's probably right around here somewhere. Looked and looked. Couldn't find it. I knew in the last 48 hours, cause I think it was two days before I saw it with two on it in the last 48 hours it dropped. It was almost three full weeks that it kept the other side.

Yeah. And I had never seen that and I didn't realize that was a thing, but apparently sometimes they drop almost simultaneously and sometimes it takes a long time. I think the bigger they get, the closer they drop to. For sure. Yeah. This is a tiny little, especially like a giant elk, you think when he shakes his head, that's four feet getting whipped around and you'll see it.

It'll startle and they'll, they might run a little bit and then they shake their head a bunch. Like my head's lopsided. Yeah. But yeah, as far as actual spots, they spend a lot of time feeding and bedding as far as just like walking around a bunch. [01:01:00] They don't necessarily do that. So if you can find a good bedding area, there's a good chance if they're using it quite a bit, there's gonna be sheds in it.

I always thought like fence rows would be awesome, and I talk to a lot of people and they're like, dude, do not waste your time walking fence rows because it doesn't, they could be 30 minutes from dropping and the impact from jumping over the fence isn't gonna cause 'em to fall off. Yeah. I've walked a lot of fence lines.

I would walk one if it was in between like food and bed in a very obvious, like huge trails. But yeah, I haven't found very much. Yeah, you'd walk it if it was a trail and not a cross, not looking for cross. If there's five or six, like they're just like a bunch of trails crossing this.

I maybe walk at once but yeah, I don't find a ton on fences. Really no. Yeah, the bedroom like this, the time of year where they're dropping, there really is no food. Like the, pretty much, for the most part, the food's gone. They're just trying to survive and hang on and, they're probably beded most of the day or beded right next to the food.

So yeah, you're really looking for the bedroom. I've got a question. Excuse me. I've got a [01:02:00] question for you, Brian. If you could say, I will give up, I will give up Elk cunning for two years. If I found this many elk sheds over the next two years, would you or is it like, no, I love shed hunting, but there's no way I would give it up.

In exchange, I don't know. If I could just pick a number that's yeah, of course I would pick like a hundred brown Boers a year. Yeah, I'd give up one elk tag for that. Okay. Yeah. What is a boon and Crockett Elk? I believe it's 360 for a lot of the state levels and three 70 or 3 75 for the all time book for American.

What's Pope and Young, do you know? Pope and Young is, I do know it's either, I think it's the high twos, I believe it's a high twos two 80 or two 90. Okay. My [01:03:00] brother shot one that was just a touch over three and it made Pope and Young. You've seen my elk from this year not in person that you've seen pictures.

Yeah. What do you think that scores? I haven't seen good enough pictures of it to score it. Okay. I've had a lot of people say close to three, somewhere in that range, but I have not scored it and I don't know enough about elk scoring to, I've seen a couple, I've seen a couple, my brother's got two that are almost both 300 on the nuts.

Okay. And so it, it takes a big elk to hit three. I think so many people, like when you start talking elk and elk cunning, there's three 40 s and three 50 s and three 90 s and now it's 400 is the number everyone wants to talk about. But it's still is a big bull to hit 300. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like you hear it a lot with everything.

If people aren't necessarily into scoring, it's very easy to be like, oh, I think that was a 300. Yeah. Or even with Whitetail man, it's probably like a 1 50, 1 60 [01:04:00] and it's but do you know that based off of experience or do you just think that's what a 1 51 60? Cuz I'm guilty of it. I used to just rough score deer, even though I had never actually scored one.

I had seen pictures and oh, somebody said, oh yeah, check this deer out. This one scored 1 47. Hey, check this deer out. It scored one 60, whatever. And so based off of that, I thought, oh yeah, this deer's probably gonna score this much. Yeah. But I honestly have no idea. I'll have to show you a picture after the episode and see what you think.

Yeah, you can like, break it down. I think like you start with a six point bowl that's got like a 35, 36 inch inside beam and a a 45 inch beam length. Or inside spread and beam length and like 12 inch fronts and a 10 inch third, 15 inch fourth and a, eight inch fifth. And that you like, there's a kind of a framework that you can start with for a average 300.

And then you look at a bowl and you start going bigger here, shorter there subtract [01:05:00] five inches cuz his fronts really aren't that strong or, and you can piece one together on the hoof. That's the best way to do it. Okay. Dude, I'm excited. What are we at time wise?

We just rocked an hour and 10 minutes. You know what I just realized also, you guys could combine your guesses for how many elk sheds we're or how many sheds we're gonna find. And it's not even how many, so I think I might be quite a ways off. You said 27, he said 18. I said 49. Yeah. So our numbers are what, 45?

Yeah. You guys guess 45 combined. And I said 49. It's, I hope you're right. I hope I'm right too. We never, I hope you're right on it. I hope I'm right, but I hope you're right. No, I don't you, I you're hope you are wrong. I hope you're, I hope you are completely wrong, because if you're wrong, that means we found at least 24 or 23.

Yeah, it's true. I hope Chris loses. I have never [01:06:00] wanted that so bad is for Chris. Just to lose miserably. Yeah, but we never picked What's riding on this? No, we haven't. What are we gonna do? I don't know. I think it should be something embarra, like something funny that you have to do instead of a monetary or any type of prize.

Like a punishment. Like a punishment. Not a prize for winning, but a punishment for losing. Yeah. Maybe like something when we stop at a restaurant or a gas station. We'll, think of it. Oh, you know what? It should be what we should. If we don't have a lot of time. But it'd be really funny to videotape the loser trying to run down Royal's antelope.

That would be funny. The whole part of 'em right there. We could probably make that happen. As long as I'm in public land and there's no CCPW agents. Oh yeah. True wildlife harassment, yeah. That would be maybe not the greatest. That would be a bummer. We'll figure something out. Has to give up their seat for Chris.

Before we hop off, we've got an announcement to make. We sure do. [01:07:00] Brian has been absolutely crushing it as the co-host and most recently as the host of the podcast. You've been running it like I've been traveling a bunch. You've been just taking it and going, had some great guests on some awesome episodes, and we're now announcing you are officially the solo host.

Of the Western Rookie Podcast. Yeah. This is gonna be the last kind of hoorah. We might do one more western rookie on this trip cuz a kafa will wrap up. But I've been running out of reasons why you're not on the podcast lately. Oh, he is in Texas. Visiting Scout. He's bringing Oh yeah. A canyon to martial arts.

He's going to a business meeting and pretty soon people are gonna start asking some questions. But this has been in the works. You're just, you're onto other things. Onto other things, yeah. Lots of things going on in the Matthews household, and I've loved being a part of the Western Ricky and getting the guests on and doing the content.

But with your knowledge, with your experience in the West, [01:08:00] with your connections in the outdoor industry it was just time that somebody was able to give the Western rookie the attention that it needed. Yes. You'll still be doing nomadic outdoors man. On the Sportsman's Empire Nation. Yep. You and your wife are launching the We are Dan and Sam podcast, which is heavily, I think you still dabble in hunting, but heavily bit focused on family life.

Yep. Business, travel, travel a little, I think we're like six episodes into that now. Yeah. But between that, some other things that are still yet to be released and then, a new business. There's just a lot happening and I didn't feel like I was doing it, the service that it required. Heavy as like a reoccurring contract guest is Maybe that's what it looks.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, whenever you need, I'm gonna hop on and just remind you that I found the biggest Elk shed. And talk about that. That's a big, that's a big set of shoes to fill for finding one shed. You're on two now. [01:09:00] How many sheds have you found intentionally shed hunting? Oh, Two. Okay. Yeah, I'm saying that's big shoes to fill.

No, that's all right. This is the west man. I've glassed up a whole ton of elk sheds. All right. We'll see how it goes. It's gonna be the battle of I would be, it's gonna be the glass. Buy you guys lunch or dinner. It's gonna be the battle of the glass versus the past. Cuz I found a lot of them in my past.

That's all right. I'm up for the challenge, man. I go into every hunt. Very confident. I'm already up too, man. And I'm not gonna do a shed hunt anymore. We're counting that deadhead. No you're not. What do you mean you, I asked you if I should stop. It's easy to I said it's on private land. No, you're not.

You're not counting a deadhead on somebody's private land. Do deadheads count as two sheds? The ranch I go to in South Dakota, they count deadheads as two. They do. That's gonna be interesting. Which is not something shed hunters do, but they do it cuz they have like contests and stuff and people Are you, here's one last question.

Are you picking up every shed you find? I'll pick everyone up. If it's super chocked out chalk white, you're [01:10:00] not gonna take it back. I found a couple chocked out elk antlers Archie hunting. One of 'em would've been a beautiful bowl. He had seven inch, eight inch bases, but it was just chocked out.

Like he was only like four inches of beam in the first two inches of his fronts. And I just took a picture of it and left it leg. If it's not like completely crumbled, hey there's something up there. If it's not like completely crumbled, I'd probably take it home. As long as it's a decent size.

If it's like a small, or if it's like a mule deer shed that's super chalky, I'll probably, snap a picture of it. Believe it. They'll count for the, yeah, if it's, they'll count for the overall, for sure. Pictures count. But if it's a fully intact chalker, I'd probably save it and then do like antler resurrection with Sean Curtis, and then turn it brown again.

If it's a good size one. I don't know how I feel about that yet. Like changing it, I just, as you might change your idea real fast when you find a 400 inch chalker. No, I don't know if I would though. I don't know if I would. I'm not a fan of like when someone shoots an elk or a deer and a tin is busted off [01:11:00] and then they have it like reformed in their mount.

I'm like, dude, you didn't shoot it like that though. You didn't shoot it with a fully intact rack, so why would you recreate it? Just because it had it at one point? That doesn't make sense to me. If it'd be the same as oh, I shot a deer when it was eight and a half years old. It disappeared for four years and then it showed back up and I shot it at eight and a half, but it had a smaller rack.

I'm just gonna put a bigger rack on it to make it look like it was when it was in its prime. That doesn't make sense to me. If it was me and it was like a whitetail that we had on our farm and we were track tracking and he broke something off like that season, I'd put it back like exactly how he had it, just to give credit to the deer in the farm.

See I'm out. I'm opposed to that. But that's because I'm not doing it. He's oh, I wanted the one 50. Now he's only 1 5 50. Oh yeah, definitely Not measurement wise. That's just, I'm like, that's what the farm crew, that's just dishonest. That's like what a, that's true. Five 11 guy.

That's what the five 11? That's five nine. Dude, it's just [01:12:00] reoccurring. I'm just more honest than you. I didn't say I do that. I said people do that. Oh, I thought you said if it was on my farm, I would do that. No, to give credit to the farm in the deer. I'm not gonna say I shot this one 50. I was like, I shot him as a 1 42, but he grew one 50.

Yeah. Okay. That makes more sense. Yeah. I think I'd still just not leave it on there. Now if it falls down and breaks, like one of the guys, the last bull that we got outta camp this year, as they were dragging it down the mountain to the four wheeler, they busted a tie off and they couldn't find it like a small part of the tie.

And they went back to find it and they never could. That I can understand because it's dude, it was an accident. Or if it like drops and breaks, recreate it to when it, what it looked like when you shot. All right. That's the. That's the plan. Then Dan's gonna keep his chalk white.

I'm gonna have a beautiful brown. All right. And hey, close this out, podcast host. Thanks for listening folks, and we will keep you updated as the western rookie crew starts vacuuming up sheds down here in the southwest. Sounds [01:13:00] good. Thanks for hanging out, Chris. See you guys. Appreciate you letting me Come on anytime.

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